NATURE The Gathering Swarms

Air date: Wed., May 24, 8:00 pm

Share

Get a look at some of the planet’s great gatherings: creatures coming together in inconceivable numbers — sometimes in millions, billions, even trillions. Included are bats and bees, locusts and ants, butterflies and cicadas, grunion and carp, sardines and wildebeest, and even parakeets and penguins. Some gather to breed or to migrate, some for protection, some simply to keep warm in the cold. But in the process, a kind of super-organism is created in which individual intelligence is superseded by a collective consciousness that shares information and moves with a single purpose for the benefit of all.